His kingdom is an alehouse and his scepter a can, which is seldom out of his hand". Sounds like a familiar 21st century binge drinking problem. But it is actually from The Man in the Moone, taken from a unique copy printed in 1609 and preserved in the Bodleian library. I came across it serendipitously as I was looking through the books - now more than 1m - that Google has been quietly scanning as part of its ambition to create a digital archive of every book that has lived or died. Google's "reader" will point you to a publisher or to a library or somewhere local to get it. If it is out of copyright you could download it as a PDF or self-publish it through sites such as lulu.com.

When it started, publishers were up in arms about Google's presumption that they could scan first and worry about copyright later. We don't hear many protests now, apart from in the US. This is because most publishers have signed up to a deal which enables anyone to read up to 20% of a book for nothing. Some publishers have found that the more they allow a reader to read, the more sales it generates. This is one of the reasons - along with the explosion of print-on-demand titles (another digital phenomenon) - that pushed book sales up 36% in 2007. They seem to be rising not in spite of but because of the digital revolution. Music industry take note.

For a digitally enhanced holiday, Google Reader is one of dozens of bookish sites that could help. In preparation for a long drive in France, I downloaded Madame Bovary, read by Julie Christie, for £7.99 from silksoundbooks.com, a company that gives the actors who do the narrating a share of the profits. Whether this has anything to do with audible.co.uk - now owned by Amazon, which had a near monopoly of audio downloads - dropping its prices I don't know, but it now offers cheaper audiobooks including the Guardian's top 40 for £7.99 or less. Whether reading or listening you are spoilt for choice with sites such as ebooks.com, fictionwise.com, the wonderful gutenberg.org and pagebypagebooks.com (for free books), or banned books from Lysistrata onwards. Booksdownload.org claims to be the world's biggest peer-to-peer downloader starting at £1.99 a month. One of the more interesting sites, Lovereading.co.uk, with 150,000 claimed readers, has started Lovewriting.co.uk, a paid-for service offering independent authors a "one-stop shop" for readers to discover their books. Maybe the start of an iTunes market for books?

If you want to read digital, what device should you use? I tried a new app to download a classic to an iPhone or iTouch for less than $5. When the buttons didn't respond I tried gutenberg.org instead and downloaded Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice on to my iPod touch for nothing (but beware of network charges). The reading experience was surprising, but not in the same league as the new electronic readers that come closest to the pleasure of reading a real book. The only problem is that they are either too clunky (the iRex iLiad) or tied to walled gardens (Kindle with Amazon and the eBook with Sony). A Guardian colleague showed me a new Cybook Gen 3 by Book Keen bought from a US site for $350. It is so light (6.13oz) and thin it fitted into my inside pocket. It downloads free books from Gutenberg easily but doesn't have a Wi-Fi link like Kindle and iLiad. The drawback was a clunkiness and a flash of black appearing in the background as pages were turned. Only the reader can say whether ebooks pass Anthony Trollope's criterion: "Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable." But more needs to be done to encourage more relaxed holidays. A survey for Credant Technologies found that 83% of workers will take their BlackBerrys or mobiles on holiday, with 65% confessing they would be in touch with the office. There is a lot to play for.